


tangled threads

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Cassian Andor-centric, Cassian's spine injury on scarif is canon to this fic hence the tags, Chronic Pain, Disability, Disabled Character, F/M, Hoth, Hurt Cassian Andor, Kay is uploaded into a new droid, Only Cassian makes it off scarif, POV Cassian Andor, Physical Disability, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Space Spanish, Walking Canes, past: Cassian/Jyn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 07:29:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17402627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: Cassian survives Scarif, but he's not sure he remembers how to live. When every day is a reminder of the love he's lost, the friends he's had to say goodbye to, and the home he'll never see again, he can't imagine a future beyond the end of the war.One chance encounter with a princess, a sewing basket, and tangled embroidery threads might just save him.





	tangled threads

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the #cassianandorpromptathon over on tumblr. The prompt was "Cassian enjoying one of his hobbies"  
> Beta thanks to the lovely ANTchan, RogueShadows, and many thanks to Dasakuryo for the Spanish aid.

Cassian runs his finger over the tear on the shoulder of his brown uniform jacket. He hadn’t noticed it before, not with how often he’d been wearing his winter gear. But tonight he’d had to make a briefing to the commanders, and K-2SO had helpfully pointed it out to him… an hour after the meeting was over. Just because he’s loaded into an astromech droid now, doesn’t make him any less… himself. Which is a comforting thought, as much as any thought can provide comfort these days.

Now, Cassian is digging through his spare closet in his room on Echo Base. He’s always been given his own room, despite the overall tendency toward bunkmates in the Alliance. At first it was because he was too young, then, because he had an Imperial security droid who stood watch quite close to him at night.

These days, Cassian thinks it might be the screams that come with the nightmares keeping a roommate away. He’s never heard the screams, only been informed of afterward. Which is ironic, given that the situation that causes the nightmares he also had been informed of afterward. In his memories, he’s heading to Scarif, then, he’s waking up, minutes later, in a Yavin IV med bay. Except he can’t feel his feet, and everything hurts and… 

They then informed him that he had been unresponsive for five months. That the plans were retrieved, but Rogue One perished. That Alderaan had been destroyed, and then, the Death Star. They tell him too, that he may never walk again, but at least he is alive.

At least. It is a strange set of words, those two. He’s heard them many times throughout his life. At least you still have your Mamá. At least we were able to find you, Kid. At least there’s always work to do in the Rebellion.

_ At least, at least, at least. _

At most, he thinks, he is glad that he can keep helping, in the small ways he can. There’s little spy work a man with a permanent limp and a weakened body can do, but there is plenty of paperwork, plenty of missions to plan, plenty of stockpiles to count. He works closely with Commander Organa these days, both of them always in the command room of Echo Base until the late hours of the night. Neither of them willing to admit they’re hiding from nightmares as much as they are willing to work until they fall asleep in chairs. 

He notices his weakness now, as he tries to move heavier boxes of gear, searching for the kit. There’s the soft whirring of a motor, the bump of an astromech droid approaching. The beeps in binary are so different from what he’s used to hearing, but the emotions are the same.

<You should have been in bed three hours ago. You are running a 21 hour sleep debt currently.>

“Thanks, Kay.”

<I cannot calculate down to the minute with this processor, but I am sure it is also MANY more minutes.>

“I know, I know.” He rubs the side of the astromech’s body, fondly smiling at his oldest friend. Thankful the upload of backed up data worked, and yet, so nostalgic for Kay’s old, original form. “I’ll go to bed soon.”

<Is there something you are missing?>

“No, Kay, I’m in here for the view.” He’s missing a great deal of things, but none of them can be found here, in the dark emptiness of his closet. Finally willing to admit his kit is gone, he pushes himself to his feet, reaching out to grasp a hanging coat for balance when he sways.

<I can go activate your chair and bring it here.>

“No. It’s all right. I can do this.” He tells himself, and the pain does fade after a moment. There’s no shame in using the chair, and he’s grateful the Rebellion even had one, but it’s his choice, as always. Tonight he chooses to walk. “I’m going to see if anyone else has a sewing kit. I’ll be back.”

* * *

The pain fades, and soon his steps are stronger, barely aided by the cane. He reaches the Commander’s quarters within minutes. He knocks, and the door slides open almost instantly. He walks in, careful to step slowly over the barrier, a small rise where the track of the door sits. Something so small he’d never noticed before, could now cause him to trip over it. “You didn’t even ask?” 

“I assumed it would be you.” Leia smiles at him. He must have caught her as she was getting ready for bed. Her hair, so often twisted into a braided crown, hangs down in one long rope over a shoulder, and there are rows of pins neatly lined up on the overturned crate in front of her. 

“I have more of those,” he nods, recognizing one’s conservation of a scarce good. “If you need some.”

“More hair pins?”

He nods and she raises an eyebrow. Did she used to do that? Before they’d worked together finding this base? Or had she caught it from him? If so, he hopes deeply she hasn’t also picked up his worse habits or cynicism. 

“Locks,” he says, “droid re-wiring, delicate tasks. Lots of reasons. They’re easy to solder together, too.”

“Maybe I should be giving you my pins, for the good of the rebellion.” 

It was surprising, the day he’d learned Princess Leia of Alderaan (because that is always how she is introduced. His planet isn’t even gone, and yet, no one mentions Fest too close to him. Perhaps that is the privilege and duty of rank, to have your identity so tied to your planet that it follows you everywhere, until it is gone, and then, it haunts you) has a sense of humor. Surprising, but delightful.

Because Cassian too is haunted. Not by any one planet, but by choices, by running and re-running the plans that led them all to Scarif, and then, led only him to surviving after. It had been his fault. 

Alderaan, at its last census held four billion sentient beings.

A Rebel Battalion consisted of 104 trained soldiers.

A Pathfinder crew? Twenty.

All of those had been lost, all of those lives were gone, now. So why was it he feels the loss of only four lives, four broken, brave, beautiful lives, so much more?

Because they’d trusted him? In the end, perhaps they did. They shouldn’t have, clearly. He wishes he could remember the last minutes, wishes he knew if Jyn died knowing he was going to live. He hopes, with even fibre of his battered, aching body, that she didn’t. Wouldn’t it have been one last betrayal in her life full of them?

He also wishes he’d kissed her, just once, but that is a far more foolish wish. Cassian has never kissed anyone. The dreams he has, (on the rare occasion that they’re dreams and not nightmares,) are full of all the memories of the almost kisses, the people he should have held close and instead pushed away. Toma with his easy smile and skill as a mechanic. Ry’bea, a dancer beyond compare, who had welcomed him into their home when they’d found him with a broken leg. Their pale blue hands had been so gentle on his skin, applying bacta patches at a time when Cassian had long forgotten gentleness. Then, Jyn. Impossible, brutal, brilliant Jyn.

And now? No. He will not even consider the daydream of kissing a princess, not now, not ever. So instead, he asks, “Do you have a sewing kit?   
  


“I do.”

He tells himself he doesn’t take note of the soft quirk of her lips. He tells himself he hasn’t catalogued the way she looks without makeup, in this soft moment before they retire to sleep. He tells himself he certainly will never think of falling asleep next to her.

  
Then, with the same tone K-2SO would have used, before the re-upload that saved him, if not his metal body, Cassian tells himself he is 100% a liar.

He’s so utterly baffled by what he finds in the bottom of the basket, Festian slips out, “¿Qué es eso?”

Even odder is how easily Leia responds, “Mierda Esta mierda.”

His eyebrow arches. Her blush is high on her cheekbones, and she covers her face with a hand. “I haven’t… I haven’t spoken… well, in longer than I’ve embroidered.”

“I see.” Galactic Basic feels clunkier, after just that small brush with his homeworld’s language. The vowels are harsher, the phrase bland, devoid of musicality. It’s why, if he’s honest with himself, he doesn’t mind how much of his routine is done in Basic. The soaring lilt of his heart’s language has no place on the battlefield.

  
Festian is made for joy, and Galactic Basic is made for reality. There’s only room for one of those things in the Rebellion. But he doesn’t want to burden her with his thoughts on the matter, so instead, he asks, “Do you practice?”

“Isperian?” She uses the proper name for the root language that so many, like his own, flowed from, each running over different planet’s soils, each picking up different trace minerals and rhythms. “Or embroidery?” 

“Los dos?”

She smiles at him. “My father would tell me to use los ambos.” Then, she leans over to pluck the tangled mess of threads from his hands. It seems like there’s at least one pair of earrings caught in the snarl of brightly colored threads, and maybe also a few datachips, along with more knots than there are stars in a char. “And my mother would tell me that even with practice, my embroidery was never as good as my marksmanship.”

“My mother would have said the same,” he offers. His voice is so shy, so soft, and yet, for once, so honest.

“You had…” 

“Well, we called them sewing lessons, but yes.” He catches one trailing thread from the chaos in her hands, separates it from the basket it’s stuck to. “My stitches were always too big, I hurried to get done, so I could go play.”

He’s still holding the thread when Leia says, “I would have liked to see that.”

“My stitches?”

“You. Playing.” She shakes her head. “I… sorry. I should have said nothing.”

But she had. He thinks perhaps her mother had it wrong. Leia’s embroidery, her marksmanship, no, they all paled in comparison to her craft with words. He’d heard her speeches more than once, felt the fire they ignited even in his tired bones, and he’s heard her offer comfort to wounded soldiers in med bays, too. He’d even been one. 

“I never told you thank you,” he says, his voice going a little hoarse. As if he’s back on Yavin IV, back in the med bay, where every breath was hard-won and every moment a small victory against death. 

“For?” Her fingers run over the fabric she’d started to embroider, also lost in memories, though of a different time.

“Nothing,” he finally admits, backing out, the way she had. And like a duelist conceding a point, she too does not press the issue. They’re both excellent marksmen, with both words and blasters, and neither of them are trained to avoid the heart.

Cassian lets go of the red thread, trapped between his fingers, and once more picks up the needles that she’d loaned to him. He should go. There’s nothing he can do, nothing he can say, that will make the tangled mess between them any easier. The Alliance hadn’t been able to save his comrades. He hadn’t been able to save her planet.

But he can’t leave her. Not… not any more than he could leave this Rebellion, this fight. It’s woven into his soul, knit into every bone of his body. “What was it going to be?” he asks, softly. Nodding at the fabric she’s clinging to.

Both of them are clinging to things. To hope, to routine, to life.

“A flower garden,” Leia says softly. “The one outside my window, back home.” There are no flowers on Hoth, and now, she has no home. By the way her smile twists, it’s clear the irony is not lost on her. “I looked at those flowers every morning for… for years. I’d never thought to study them as if I’d lose them forever.”

Leia looks down, runs her fingers over the mostly empty fabric. Cassian thinks that whatever the flowers must have looked like on Alderaan when they bloomed, they could not compare to Leia right now. She hasn’t bloomed. Not yet. All her potential, her beauty, still lies coiled underneath the mask she wears as Commander.

Someday, he thinks, Leia will smile without any fear of the future, and in that moment, the last rose of Alderaan will bloom.

He hopes he lives to see that day. Softly, he says, “Nadie nunca nos deja del todo.” The words, even to him, are strange, and too heavy, too much like the far past which he prefers to keep shrouded. If she asks, he can pretend he’s said,  _ nothing is gone forever,  _ when he hasn’t. Not at all.

The words were as familiar to him as grief itself. Cassian had heard those words said many times, perhaps too many times, as a child. Each time the funeral pyre was lit, each time the loss was given back to the dancing stars above. The last time he’d said them, they had been whispered into the silence of the transport ship Draven had stowed him on. Whispered not to the blue-green dancing lights of home, but to the long streaking stars of hyperspace. Said, not for one elder, one person, but for a family, a home, a way of life.

Leia freezes.

He’s worried it’s too much. He shouldn’t…

Leia says, “Thank you.” And then, she smiles at him. It’s not as bright as a crystal-edged garden of Alderaan, but it has the same light as the stars reflected in the snow of Fest. She adds, “I don’t know enough to say any of the right things. But I know my father kept that faith, and… And thank you. Your words alone mean more than most.”

“I know the feeling,” he replies. Tell her, he thinks to himself. Stop being a coward. But those words are harder than even the language of his home to summon. 

Leia shoves the fabric back into the basket. There are times that her motions suggest the wild childhood, the terror-to-her-tutors she’d been that he’d only ever heard stories of. So often she’s trapped inside the poise of a princess that must forever mourn the planet she couldn’t save. Only now does he realize why she’d been so shocked that he played. Because he too is trapped inside the life he lives now. One where there is no time for play, for joy, or even for hobbies. “Take the whole thing,” Leia says, nodding at the basket. “I’ve been meaning to discard it but…”

“Thank you, Leia.”

Cassian has to do some maneuvering to carry the basket and set his cane down, but he manages. He’s always managing and maneuvering. Always fighting the odds. Learning to walk again. They said he wouldn’t survive his first mission, his fiftieth. They said he’d break when he was undercover as an Imperial. They said…

They’d said Scarif would become a graveyard. That he would never come home. In that, perhaps, for once, they’d been right.

  
  


When he gets back to his room, he falls asleep quickly. For once, he dreams of nothing but the dancing colors that appeared in the night sky when he was a boy. In his dream, he flies among them, and in his dream, the colors sing to him.

The next day is busy, full of drafting new plans and dealing with the latest Wampa attack at the far end of the East Wing. Leia makes a few smart remarks, the type that he’d never noticed before they’d started working more closely, which leave him with an almost smile on his face. He’s not quite sure he remembers how to truly smile, but the close lipped nods are closer than anything else. 

That night, he sews the tear in his jacket. Just to see if he remembers, he attempts a few other stitches. At the edge of his tear, he makes a small x with neat, precise little flashes of the needle. Then, he links a second, a third. His thumb runs over the stitches, and there’s the tiniest bit of… of pride.

A pride he hasn’t felt since his first days at the shooting range. 

He still remembers. 

* * *

The next day, he wears the brown jacket to the formal meeting of the various commanders. His work was done in brown-shaded threads, with only a little red, twisted into some of the stitches that called for two colors, darting over the dark brown fabric. Red, he thinks, like the Alliance Starbird, like dawn, like blood. 

No one notices the soft designs whorling over the former tear during the meeting. There are too many other things that matter, and really, no one ever looks too look at Cassian. Even when they’d promoted him, he’d noticed how many of them, how many commanders who used to be able to look him in the eyes after they’d asked him to kill for the sake of the Rebellion, could no longer look at him. Their gaze slid past him the way bare hands slipped off ice. They had no problem asking him to kill, to die for their cause, but something about asking him to continue living for the Rebellion, now, when he walked with a cane and spoke with a soft slur from a broken-and-poorly-healed jaw, was too much for them.

They were fools, he’d thought. Because killing for the Rebellion broke him far deeper, and in far more ways, than living for the sake of those who had died on Scarif did.

“Nice designs, Andor,” Leia says softly, and her hand hovers over his shoulder. “May I?”

He’s grateful to be asked. Too many weeks in a medbay where his body was others to move and measure left him even less comfortable with unasked for touch. “Yes.”

  
Her fingers skim over the designs. She doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t say anything at all, and panic wells beneath his breastbone. Because she hasn’t spoken, he begins, “I know it’s not regulation but--”   
  


“We’re a rebellion. Who are we to have uniform regulations?” Leia’s hand remains on his shoulder, and he wishes he could always feel as warm as he does in that moment. “You mended it beautifully.”

He should say something. They’re alone in a briefing room. If there ever was a time, it would be now. That’s a lie. The right time had been last night. As always, he’s too late. So, simply, he says, “I’m sorry I ripped it in the first place.”

“Don’t be. Sometimes, the mending repairs more than just the tear.” Leia finally pulls her hand back. A chill deeper than any he’s felt on his brief forays outside the base sinks deep inside of him. 

That night, he sets to work on the tangled mess of threads. It’s slow-going, and he’s glad for Kay’s conversation as he works. He’s fluent in binary, of course, and he tries to tell himself he’s a fool for missing Kay’s old voice, for their Galactic Basic based conversations. He should be happy he has Kay at all, thanks to the backup file. 

<You are allowed to miss me.> Kay adds. <I miss me.>

The guilt he feels is enough for him to set the embroidery down, and head to bed. His dreams that night are of rebuilding Kay, only each piece he picks up melts like ice in his hands.

* * *

  
  


Routine takes over, as it always does. It’s one of the benefits of being a lifelong soldier, the way he can fall back into routine on any base throughout the galaxy. It’s also, he thinks, one of the reasons he fought so hard to walk again, because rebel bases are not particularly friendly to hoverchairs. They’d offered to find a safe place for him on a Rebellion-friendly world, in that case. They hadn’t realized how much of a death sentence that would have been.

_You can still have a normal life_ , they’d said. But his normal life is this, the bustle of a base, the roar of X-Wings taking off, the mission planning that lasts for hours or days, the constant fear of being found by the Empire. Those things, those are all he knows.

He knows nothing of peace.

No. That’s a lie too. His peace, like his family, and his routines, simply looks different than most. Here, in the Command Room, with the soft hum of all their equipment, and the green glow from the war boards, he finds peace. Usually (no, that’s a lie,  _ always _ ) when Leia is here as well. They have small, quiet moments, something almost like happiness, nods shared across meeting tables when they're in agreement, quiet words of praise, of comfort, of hope, traded when one is most in need. Sometimes he finds the work he'd left undone the night before neatly finished. Other times, he makes two cups of hot chocolate, and leaves one for her. Their peace is quiet, but it is there. And all the while, they are preparing, testing, planning, for the day even this small peace is shattered. Because both of them know it will happen. Good things never last too long.

Then, one day, the Empire does find them. It’s no longer a false alarm, no longer a drill. Cassian stays focused, stays at Leia’s side, the two tag-teaming the various tasks needed to take down the AT-ATs and get everyone to safety. Neither of them are thinking of their own safety. It’s Kay who comes in, whistling loudly.

“Not now, Kay!” Cassian snaps, tracking the path of a transport on the screen. Kay zaps him in his good leg. “Hey!”

Kay says a few expletives that make Cassian hope, very deeply, that Leia’s binary is worse than her Isperian. 

“We’ll head out soon, Kay.” Cassian says. “You should get on the transport. Now.”

Kay beeps again. <This time, I’m not sending you off alone.>

“It’s…” his words die in his throat, because he can see nothing but K-2SO back on Scarif. Doing what he needed to. For Cassian. For the mission.

<I wanted you to live then. I want you to live now. Get on the damn transport.>

“He’s right,” Leia nods. “You go. I’ll stay.”

And then, part of the roof caves in. Cassian grabs her, pulls her away from the ice and the cords. Her body presses against his, the way… He closes his eyes. Takes one breath. Another. “Tell the transport to take off. We’ll take my U-Wing.” It’s the hard call, and it’s the right call. Because that’s another constant in his life. The right thing is never the easy one. There’s no telling if they’ll get to his ship in time, if they’ll be able to take off. But they’ll try. They’ll keep fighting.

Leia nods, and slides her pistol into her hand. “Let’s go.”

<Ship is packed and ready, Cassian.>

“How?” he asks, as they make the turn out of the room and into a badly damage hallway. He puts his hand on Kay’s domed head, using him for support instead of his cane, because he’s forgotten it, back in the command room.

<If I’m going to look like an astromech, I suppose I can act like one sometimes.>

It’s slow going, made slower by him. “You two should go ahead.”

“No.” Leia takes his arm, loops it over her shoulder. 

It’s just like… it’s… like the past and it’s so far from the past. There’s no sand, not here, just the chill of snow flying in from broken walls. But he hears the surf, feels the echo of that other place within him, louder than the noises of the evacuation siren. Every part of him hurts now, both his heart and his body. “I’m getting sick of being carried places.” He says through teeth gritted in pain and self-hatred.

“You carry enough of the Rebellion on your shoulders,” Leia retorts. 

* * *

They make it to the U-Wing, against all odds, he thinks. Wishes that Kay could tell him the statistical chance as easily as he used to. Wishes all of this was as easy as it used to be, that he wasn’t living this last-minute attempt at escape in lockstep with relieving another memory of trying to escape.

  
Trying, and failing.

He’d failed.

He won’t fail this time. He gets Leia inside the U-Wing just as Darth Vader appears. There’s one horrible, horrible moment, where the loud breathing, the ripple of power, the fear is all he knows.

Cassian’s hand drops to his blaster. Lifts it.

One black-gloved hand reaches out. The weapon is yanked out of his hands, and flies directly into Vader’s. Cassian feels the pressure on his neck next. The slow stopping of breath, pain even worse than the kind he lives with every day. And then, it’s Leia’s hand yanking him into the ship, Kay keying into the controls and activating the engine.

  
A moment later, his hand is on the commands to launch to hyperspace. The calculations were preloaded, so he puts his trust in both the force and Kay, then, he pulls down the lever.

Then, he collapses in pain, his eyes sliding shut. When he wakes, this time, it’s not to a med bay’s cold sterility, but instead, in the U-Wing and warm. He’s wrapped in a blanket, and someone must have given him painkillers because he feels nothing but comfort. 

  
Or maybe that’s because there’s one constant, between waking up then, and waking up now. It’s Leia, sitting by his side, watching him with concern in her eyes. Though she’d sung to him, ever so softly, on Yavin IV, now, she’s silent. But she’s holding his hand, and that, he thinks, might be sweeter than any song.

“You were going to fight him, weren’t you?” she asks. The tone she uses he’s more familiar with her uses when a soldier goes off mission, or someone disappoints her. He realizes then, until now, he’s never disappointed her. 

“I’d have tried for a shot, at least.”

“You would have died.”

“It’s no more than I deserve.” Which is how he’s lived his life for years. He’s done terrible things in the name of the greater good. If he’d even injured Vader, couldn’t it have brought the scale of his crimes against his goodness more balanced?

Leia shakes her head, gets up, and walks up to the cockpit. Cassian winces. But he hadn’t lied, (for once.) What more could he have said. Kay wheels over a little bit later, one small mechanical tool-arm dragging the sewing basket over.

“What?” He shakes his head. Out of all the things to bring….

<Your vital signs are much healthier while you’re sewing. Get started or I’ll zap you.>

“Your bedside manner is charming.”

<If you wanted bedside manner, you should have uploaded me into a med droid.>

“We’ll get you in the right body soon, Kay.”

<Any body where I can be with you is acceptable at this time.>

Cassian blinks away something that feels a little too much like tears. He’s glad now, for the distraction of the tangled threads. Once he gets to work, time slips away. All he knows is the twisting colors that he works to free from all their knots. It’s a lot like re-wiring a droid, he thinks, forgetting for a moment that he’d learned this first. 

* * *

But those memories come back, slowly, as slowly as the work on the threads is. Moments of sitting at his mother’s side, balling yarn or practicing his basic stitches. Moments where he was so warm, so happy, so love. His first attempts at the color work his mother’s family was famous for (The Andors were more well-known for their stubbornness, than any sort of art), yielded nothing but tangled messes.

“Poco a poco,” his mother had whispered to him as he’d hurried to finish his work so he could go play. “Poco a poco. Muchos golpes derriban una cydera.” Many small steps, to take down a great tree. Or as his father had said it, “Muchas bombas derriban un AT-TE”. But of course, his mother hadn’t liked that version nearly as much.

Now, he wishes his life had a great deal more trees and far fewer bombs, but some things can’t be changed. No wonder his mother had glared at his father any time he’d say his version. No wonder that his mother would spend the nights embroidering, stitch by stitch, waiting for his father to come home.

And no wonder, Cassian thinks, she had thrown the last work she’d ever made, finished the night the news came back, the night that Jeron Andor’s ashes, not himself, had returned, into the fire. 

He still remembers the flames licking greedibly around the beautiful fabric, the way the threads had burned, blazing for one moment with more colors than he’d ever seen, before crumbling to smoke and dust.   
  


This work, he promises himself, will not burn. The work takes him hours, and eventually, he asks Kay to bring him one of the small marking tools he uses on blueprints. When Kay returns with it, he asks about Leia.

<She appears to be asleep in your chair. Should I wake her?>

“No, no.” And it’s not his chair. It’s the Rebellion’s chair, the Rebellion’s ship. “I’ve got work to do.”

They’re in hyperspace for a long time, which makes sense. Where they can’t be tracked, and hopefully, not followed. It also gives him plenty of time to work. 

He’s nearly done by the time Leia comes back to his side. “I’m sorry,” she begins, not looking at him. “It just… it made me mad, to hear how little you valued your own life when…”

  
“When it’s so useful to the Rebellion?” he retorts.

  
There’s a very angry whistle from Kay, and Leia’s expression matches the tone. “When you matter so much, to so many people,” Leia finally says.

That makes no sense. He’s spent his entire life trying very hard not to matter, so he will be less missed when he’s gone. Because the life expectancy for a spy is a short one. Because he’s pledged his life to a fight, instead of fighting for his life. Because… because he doesn’t want anyone to carry grief for him, the way he does for all those he’s lost. “I don’t want that. I don’t! It shouldn’t have been me airlifted off that beach! Why not HER! Why didn’t you save Jyn?”

The words break free of him. They’re words that he’s carried long, though he’d meant them for Draven, not Leia. But like so many other things, the burden falls on the princess’s shoulder. “Because she died to save you,” Leia replies softly. He closes his eyes as she tells him what she knows. How the blood on his shirt was Jyn’s. How she must have covered his body when the blaster fire happened. 

How the transport had found him, got him off the shore, and into space right before the Death Star burned the planet to bits. 

“Why?” Cassian finally asks.

Leia reaches out, and takes the fabric out of his hands. There’s a small, sad smile on her face as she looks over all the neatly un-tangled strings, examines each color. She’s not looking at the actual fabric, any more than he’s ever looking at the future. She speaks, softly. “Perhaps that’s what life is. Each of us saving each other, over and over.”

He thinks of re-uploading Kay, of learning to walk again, of finding a new purpose at Leia’s side. He thinks, maybe, that is what life is. Trying, and trying, and trying. Every tangled thread containing the potential of beauty, every broken thing offering the hope of mending.

Leia finally turns the embroidery over to look at the side she’d once laid a few clumsy stitches on. He’d only added a few, only in the places needed to keep the threads from being too tangled. The rest, he’d carefully marked up with ink that would be hidden by the threads. “I found a holo of the palace…” he begins. “I don’t know if it was the garden you were…”

“It’s not,” she says. His heart crashes against this ribs. Another failure, then. “It was the one my mother planted, for me.” Leia traces the designs. “Will you teach me the stitches?”

Cassian nods. Some other feeling, more akin to a bomb of pure light, erupts inside his ribcage. It’s enough to knock the breath out of him. If she wants to learn, then she wants to spend time with him again, on whatever base they’ll next call home.

_ Welcome home, _ he’d told her. But in the end, it had been a home for what, hours? Minutes? Had it even mattered to her? He bites his lip, remembering what Leia had told him. It must have. Jyn must have known she mattered. She still matters. He’ll carry her, with her family, with all his dreams, forever. “I’d like that,” he says.

Something almost like laughter echoes in his mind. Something warm. Something good. She’d died to save him, and he would live to honor her memory. He would keep mending himself, Leia, the Rebellion, all the broken things of the galaxy. He’d been given another chance, and this time, he would not waste it. “Leia. I’d teach you anything. I’d… I’d help you with anything that I can. Though I doubt I’m--”

“Don’t you dare say you’re not much help. That evacuation wouldn’t have gone half as smoothly without you.”

He lets out a dry chuckle. “Only for us is an utter base destruction considered smoothly.”

His comment gets a small smile from her, but it fades as she speaks. “I… I’m not sure why you’re so kind to me,” she says. There’s so much scorn in her voice it can nearly be felt, a bitter, dark thing like tar. Clinging to her words, her expression. He knows that pull all too well, the anger at one’s own flaws, the inability to see one’s self as deserving of love. He’d started to remember how to be loved, before Scarif. He’d believed, for one shining moment, that he deserved, perhaps, the smallest bit of joy in his life. Leia, he realizes, has no more idea of her own beauty and warmth, than a sun knows of the life on the planets that orbit it. “I’m demanding and fussy and horribly cold.”

“Good thing I’m from an ice planet,” he replies. “And quite used to taking orders.”

Leia laughs, then, as delicate as the first green shoots that push through the frost. Because Fest, unlike Hoth, has a spring. And if there is a spring, he thinks, perhaps things might bloom again.

Kay whistles, loud, and beeps out an obscenity.

Cassian blushes, because Kay’s calculation, although clumsy, is accurate. This is statistically as good a chance as ever to tell her. “Thank you, Leia. For… for sitting by my side. In the med bay. I’d hear you sing… and I held onto that song.” For so much longer than just those days of healing.

No. That’s a lie. Because he is still healing. Because perhaps he’ll always be healing. And he’ll always hold onto that song, even if he loses her. 

Leia’s hand slides into his once more. “There is so much we’re both holding on to, isn’t there? Almost as much as we’ve lost.” 

“Right now,” Cassian replies, “I think I am found.”

A smile appears on her face. A real one. Had he been a fool to think it would take the war ending to see such a thing? Perhaps. Perhaps it was worth it to be the fool, if it mean watching joy bloom on her face. He’d spent so long staring at that holo of the garden, inking it carefully on to her fabric, that he’d forgotten how much her beauty dulled any flowers. He’d spent so long thinking of the past, he hadn’t thought once of his future. Jyn had loved him, and he would love her forever, but there is more than one color in the sunrise, more than one bloom in a garden, and this one, this new, tender thing with someone as broken as him, is just as much something to be treasured. 

When she bends to kiss him, he knows he was right. It’s a first kiss, but far from a last one. It’s full of promise, full of as many possibilities as a handful of threads in all the colors of the sky. This moment, this hope, is all truth. The pain of the past will still be within his heart, alongside all the past memories of joy and warmth, but now, there is a future. Cassian has found himself once more, knows exactly where belongs, his place, his duty, his hope.

And all of them belong to Leia.

  
  
  



End file.
